In press working, generally, a flat plate material unwound from a coiled plate material is cut by a shearing apparatus into a blank material, and the blank material is pressed.
Specifically, the shearing apparatus cuts the plate material into a certain shape by putting the plate material between its upper and lower blades (for example, see Patent Literature 1), and then the blank material is conveyed to a press machine pressed into a desired three-dimensional shape.
Incidentally, in the case of a conventional shearing apparatus, the shape of a blank material depends on the shapes of its upper and lower blades; therefore, from the viewpoint of processing accuracy of the blades, the blank material cannot be formed into a complicated shape. This causes a large number of unwanted parts to be left, thus reducing production efficiency.
Further, with a high likelihood of leaving burrs, such blank materials leave a space between them when joined on top of each other into a stack, and the space causes an increase in height of the stack, which in turn poses a risk of tilting the whole stack.
Furthermore, the need to temporarily stop the plate material in cutting the plate material makes it hard to say that productivity is necessarily excellent.
Incidentally, a laser blanking apparatus that cuts a plate material with use of laser light has recently been under development. Use of this apparatus offers an advantage in that program control of movement of the apparatus with use of laser light makes it possible to precisely cut a plate material into a desired shape and reduces the likelihood of leaving burrs.
A known example of such an apparatus is a laser cutting apparatus including: material transporting means for transporting a plate-shaped material in a feed direction; head moving means for moving a processing head that is capable of emitting laser light; upstream supporting means for supporting the material being transported; and downstream supporting means for supporting a cut part obtained by cutting, wherein the upstream supporting means is constituted by a roller conveyor mechanism, and the downstream supporting means is constituted by a belt conveyor mechanism (for example, see Patent Literature 2).